Troops kept sex slaves, panel told

May 2 2003By Jill JolliffeDili

The Indonesian military conducted a systematic campaign of sexual abuse of East Timorese women during Indonesia's 24-year occupation, a hearing in Dili has been told.

The allegations, by a former Indonesian-appointed governor and East Timorese women, were made in a hearing by the Reception, Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which is examining human rights violations against women since 1974.

Former governor Mario Carrascalao said the army forced women to be sex slaves for officers and killed their husbands.

"The perpetrators were military officers with territorial functions and these women were the rewards available to senior-ranking officers," said Mr Carrascalao, head of the opposition Social Democrat Party.

In Jakarta, military spokesman Colonel Djazairi Nachrowi denied the existence of such a system. "We have to take into account that the statements came from a former governor who had betrayed his own country," he said. "He is probably frustrated or unstable because of psychological stress."");document.write("

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Women told the hearings of having been raped, tortured and forced to live as sex slaves.

Beatriz Miranda Guterres spoke as a survivor of the 1983 massacre at Kraras in Viqueque district. She said her husband was taken away by the military and she was forced to have sex with a Kopassus special forces soldier under the threat that other villagers would be murdered if she did not.

She lived with the soldier for a year, became pregnant and miscarried. When he finished his tour of duty, she was taken by a different soldier, to whom she had a child, and was then handed over to his successor.

Mr Carrascalao said that, as governor between 1982 and 1992, he received "thousands" of letters from women telling of rapes and killings.

He alleged that the military had made it a policy to force the wives of independence guerilla fighters to live with them.

"Soldiers then killed their husbands," he said. It was "an organised effort to crush the mentality of the East Timorese people".